GREETINGS again, groggy readers. This edition is brought to you by indignation, annoyance, and paralyzing disappointment. Only one of you wrote to me. How dare you not have problems! I know you are all curled into a tight little ball right now, rocking your poor mind out of its mold-filled pickle jars. I’ll say! If this is true and you can provide evidence (polaroids would be perfect, and if not, hire a lithographer), I guess I’ll forgive your negligence.

And now I’m stuck talking about feelings. What madness is this? Well as per usual I am ever professional. Enjoy yourselves, or if not, eat moldy pickles.

Dear Bloody Mary Snippets,

Sometimes I have feelings and I don’t know how to get them out of me. Academic exorcism doesn’t seem to be an option as my profs have complained about bile and pus on my final papers. What do I do?

I understand because I have tried pouring alcohol over my heart (So I admit I had already been quite hammered, okay? Now leave me alone, I am writing good advice to those who need it. I have great experience with life. Can’t you see it on my certificate?). And that only made it obvious in the morning that we—as a culture, society, species—need to find a new organ through which emotions are reified. The heart makes us live; it makes us move. It pumps blood all over and gives oxygen to our otherwise water and bacteria-filled sack of flesh-bones-muscle-excretions. Emotions on the other hand do not operate in such an all-encompassing, life-affirming way. Indeed, the heart is like emotions inasmuch as emotions are hollow and a spastic muscle you hardly realize is there.

The cheesy notion of an integrated self-consciousness where emotions are manifold in everything you do is a product of 60s liberation movements. Its implications are a room full of tissue wontons, sore throats, and possibly spit flying everywhere from the over-excited self-ruminations. No, emotions are not your tear ducts, larynxes, or saliva.

I daresay however that you have yourself suggested an excellent quality of emotions in “bile and pus.” They remain in us for a long time, keep us from being swallowed by the virus of anhedonia and the total numbness of death, as well as are taken poorly to by other people when you propel them spontaneously. Vomiting, infected wounds, and numbers one and two are all great examples because there is proper etiquette surrounding them. But the fact is that the world doesn’t care whether your poop lands in the toilet, the German toilet shelf, or your bookshelf. Only other people who vomit and secrete strange yellow fluids find it alarming because it reminds them that they too, one day, but hopefully not this day, will have feelings.

O STUDENTS, think of it this way: just as there are designated places to do your business, so too emotions are to be maintained, controlled, and cleaned up after in the privacy of a graffiti-covered stall. There your professors will never find you. There your professors have no right to find you. The whole point of having emotions at all is to remain interesting enough to even engage this strange breed of alien-creatures who have invaded your lives. This is why you have Facebook accounts jealously guarded with privacy settings, why you have an ‘official’ email and a real email, and also why you put passwords on all your electronic devices in the first place! Bathrooms, washrooms, whatever you like to call it. The internet is a water closet for your bile and pus.

STUDENTS, it is true that if we don’t excrete these fluids and wastes we will die, just as if the heart stops we will die too. But you cannot squeeze out a person’s heart and examine it for diseases and still expect her or him to be alive! We need more of those psychobabbiologists on campus. I think I will invest in that degree if the university will allow me to step foot on campus again, after what happened last time…

With Overall Doo Respect,

Bloody Mary Snippets

Posted by Bloody Mary Snippets’ representative, Jane Shi. Please send your queries to bloodymarysnippets@gmail.com for expert advice on how to best clean your bowels. In the mean time Bloody Mary Snippets is busy with cleaning shelves in a fancy German library.